Come Pour the Wine (30 page)

Kit’s family had increased too. Chairs had been added one by one to her dining room table after the birth of Mark and Deborah. Joel, Jeremy and the youngest, Rebecca, known to her peers as Becky … Kit was now the mother of five. When she looked around her table at her husband and children she never forgot to say to herself, Thank you, God, for blessing me … I’m not sure I rate it, but I’ll take it …

Janet settled into the life of a suburban housewife. Her apparent contentment was a quality Bill both envied, and, face it, resented at the same time. Changing events were so
normal …
matter of fact … all in a day’s work. No traumas … no special upset that Nicole was growing up and would soon be ready to start nursery school. It didn’t seem to bother
her
a bit. Well, it did him….

After the children were put to bed they went to the den and settled into their favorite chairs. Bill read the paper, Janet worked on her needlepoint. From time to time she interrupted his scanning the column of the stock market report, but he scarcely heard—though he was careful to nod his head as though he hung on every word.

“… if you could have seen how excited Nicole was …”

Bill poised his index finger on a quotation for U.S. Steel and looked up at her in sudden interest. “Sorry … I’m afraid I didn’t hear. Who did you say was excited?”

“Nicole.”

“Oh? What about?”

“Going to nursery school.”

“What nursery school?”

“The one Kit’s sending Mark and Deborah to. Of course they’re in kindergarten, but Nicole will be in the same group as Joel and—”

As though he’d been struck by lightning he said, “You’re sending Nicole to
school?
For God’s sake, she’s only three.”

Janet was shocked by his outburst. Suppressing her own anger, she said quietly, hoping not to upset him more, “Kit sent the twins when they were two …”

“I don’t give a damn what Kit did. Nicole’s not going to be regimented. If she’s in the way I’ll take her to the office …”

Regimented?
And then she remembered, and understood … remembered what had happened during
his
childhood … being carted off to a military academy … It wasn’t Nicole … Bill was reacting to Bill … a hundred years ago. It was a little frightening …

“Nicole’s not in the way, Bill,” she answered quietly, “quite the contrary. But she needs other children to play with. She’s very sad when the school bus passes the house in the morning. The other day she asked Mark if he wouldn’t take her—”

“Why the hell didn’t you discuss this with me before?”

“Well, darling, that’s what I’m doing now.”

The hell she was … that decision had been made by Kit and herself. Who was she kidding? “Okay, Janet. Since you’re now kind enough to tell me about this, the answer is no. Nicole’s entirely too young to be sent away to school.”

Janet bit on her lower lip. She’d had no idea he would carry on this way. Still, she did understand. Better take it easy … “She isn’t exactly being sent away, Bill. She’ll be at school from nine to eleven-thirty. But most important are her feelings. She’ll be very lonely without Jeremy and Rebecca to play with …”

Leave it to her to push him into a corner … in her sweet, compassionate way she sounded as though the sacrifice was all hers … like it was only for Nicole’s sake. The hell it was. Whatever Kit did, Janet followed suit. He wished to God he’d never moved to Westchester, especially this close to Kit. Janet couldn’t go to the bathroom without her. At this moment he wanted to pull up stakes and buy a place in Manhattan … at least he’d be able to take Nicole to school and back. If they were living in the city he might understand Janet’s feeling that Nicole needed the company of other children, but here … damned if he did. Nicole seemed to be happy enough playing with the baby and more than content with the things she and Janet did together. Well, what was the use of arguing? He’d look like a heel if he tried to stop Janet. And it was inevitable that Kit would tell him he was a selfish s.o.b. Eight would get you five that she’d get into the act. She always did … Wasn’t she responsible for their moving to the suburbs? You bet. Talk about mothers-in-law? How about friends? … If only she’d butt out … she dominated everyone, especially Nat, or so it sometimes seemed to him. But damn it, what’s the use of arguing the thing? Janet was going to have her way, didn’t she always? … “Okay, where the hell is this school?”

The day Nicole was enrolled Bill went with them. Something very personal happened to him when Nicole quickly let go of his hand and sat on the floor next to a little boy, speaking to him as though they’d been buddies from day one. Soon they were sharing crayons, and Bill felt even more pushed out when she pecked him on the cheek and said, “Good-by daddy” so fast and went back to her work of art. For a week Bill stayed home from work in the morning so that he could drive Nicole home at noon … he wasn’t about to trust her to the care of some stupid bus driver … He’d read about how they sometimes careened off the highway. The fantasized horrors got to be so extreme he could hardly work at the office in the afternoon. Never once did he hear his own mother’s voice in his, but it was there….

At the end of the year he had saved enough of Nicole’s crayon sketches to all but cover the walls in his office. More than once he looked up from the drawing board to see her extraordinary work, all thumbtacked to a special bulletin board he’d bought. By God, she was really good, for a four-year-old. He especially, no surprise, liked the one captioned “Daddy.” The composition was at least as good as some of the nutty art he’d seen. And her description of it to him one night, as he held her on his lap, was more proof that she was turning into the brilliant little girl he was always sure she’d be … the sky was blue and the tree was green, the moon was yellow and the house was white. Red, purple and orange flowers grew along the path leading to the front porch … He laughed at the baggy suit on the spindly-legged man with the thick brown hair, a round face with two large brown eyes and a curved smiling line below the nose of two dots.

“Do you like it, daddy?”

“I love it, princess, but you best of all,” he said, holding her closer. “Just don’t grow up so fast, baby … stay a little girl for just a while longer. For my sake, okay, princess?”

And though princess had said she was willing, time was not … Somehow, when he wasn’t looking, she was already turning six, and once again he was going to school with Janet to enroll Nicole, except this time in first grade. Today was even more painful. He’d allowed Nicole to slip away, had been deprived of her baby days.

Janet couldn’t help but think again about the generations overlapped … Bill reacted exactly as his mother had when he watched three-year-old Jason climb aboard the bus on his way to nursery school for the first time. Just as he had with Nicole, and as his mother had with him.

Later that afternoon he sat in the office unable to concentrate on anything. Swiveling his chair around, he stared out the window to the bridge beyond. It wasn’t that the view was so impressive—in fact, he scarcely noticed it now. He just felt so
empty.
The children seemed to notice him less, both Jason and Nicole had their own playmates, and on weekends went to someone’s house to stay overnight. Matter of fact, Janet didn’t seem to need him very much either. He seemed someone moving around between the lives of his children and wife … hell, no one noticed he was there too … that
he
needed attention … well, he didn’t mean to sound sorry for himself … What the hell, he didn’t want to sound like his mother … not that she hadn’t been entitled at times … But he was a man, and a man didn’t complain. Not then, after six years in suburbia, and not even when the same thoughts still plagued him after ten years.

No, Bill didn’t complain … not openly … and his stiff upper lip kept Janet in the dark, assuming the marriage was basically okay … After all, she didn’t have much time to dwell on it … taking the children to the orthodontist, to dancing, tennis and swimming lessons, and then there was the PTA, and at election time getting involved in who the next assemblyman, senator or congressman would be. That was the least she could do, she figured, for their children’s welfare, their future. Still, for all her involvements, her first priority, she reminded herself, was Bill. By four every afternoon she was home to supervise dinner, refresh herself and get ready for his homecoming. He was, after all, her husband …

They were considered the ideal couple. Especially envied was the apparent
permanence
of their marriage, based on its predictability … Janet’s weekly routine worked like a clock that kept perfect time. It wasn’t always so easy, and sometimes she’d have liked to have skipped a beat, slept late, violated the routine. But she owed it to Bill, to the marriage, she would remind herself. And he did seem content, although at times she thought he seemed rather remote, unusually quiet.

Monday was pot roast. Wednesday was men’s night at the club. And Saturday was men’s
day
at the club; after eighteen holes of golf, Bill would shower, and immediately after dinner the men would settle down to a game of poker or gin rummy. The women had dinner at one another’s homes on Wednesdays and Saturdays, chatted about the latest fashions, exchanged gossip, discussed the latest fad diets … then out came the bridge tables. After the children were driven to school there was tennis in the morning—Kit and Janet were partners for doubles—a quick sandwich at noon, and then it was time to pick up the kids.

Janet spent a great deal of her time chauffeuring. It was like reliving her own childhood back in Kansas. Sometimes she laughed at herself. She still had that midwestern mentality. For all the supposed sophistication of living in Westchester, she was no different than Mary Lou back in Wichita.

The McNeils … theirs was a charmed life. Ask anyone …

Anyone except, for example, Bill McNeil. He was jealous of Janet’s tranquility, and decent enough to be angry with himself for begrudging her it. But after ten years of being submerged by … no, not
by … in …
in Westchester … he felt himself, almost literally, being strangled. He needed air … needed to get away … they all did … And so it was that one night after dinner he took out the brochures on Hawaii and made the earthshaking announcement as he passed them around, “I bought tickets today, it’s sort of my surprise …” And having said that, he handed the tickets to Janet.

She looked at the date and then at Bill’s face. Reluctantly she said, “Darling, these are for March.”

“So?”

“Well, we can’t very well take the children out of school—”

“Oh … right … well, how about April, Easter vacation?”

“Mr. McNeil, you’ve got a date. April 15.”

On the fifteenth of April, at precisely 9:45, Bill checked the nine pieces of luggage plus Janet’s carry-all equipment, and then they boarded TWA to fly off into the wild blue yonder. Bill settled into his seat. The only annoyance was when their plane was held up for two hours in San Francisco because of poor visibility. Also, Jason wasn’t being too cooperative. After exploring all the airport shops, having purchased enough bubble gum, Hershey bars and comic books to last until he was ninety, he got tired and even sullen. His persistent question … “When are we going to leave, dad?” drove Bill nuts. His own patience growing a bit thin, he informed his son that he expected it would be when
they
were ready. Janet, of course, kept her cool throughout, reminding him that Jason was, after all, pretty tired, and still a little boy … Well, damn it,
he
had feelings too, even if he wasn’t a darling sweet six-year-old … Oh, God … what was the matter with him? … jealous of his own son … ?

At nine-thirty Honolulu time they debarked, walked into the terminal to be greeted by fragrant leis, steel guitars and merry voices singing out
aloha.

Leaving most of their gear and keeping their suite reservation at the Royal Hawaiian, they took off again to Maui. But as far as Bill was concerned, a day of traipsing through the flower-filled paths, exploring the island, smelling the sweet perfume of hibiscus was very much for the birds, and he suggested it might be an idea to get back to the excitement of Honolulu. Jason supported his father wholeheartedly on that one. He couldn’t wait to get back to the giant waves and the surfboard. So back they went.

After the children had been kissed goodnight, Janet and Bill danced until three in the Monarch Room of the Royal Hawaiian, then went to see the last act at the Haymarket, their eyes slightly out of focus now as they watched the grass skirts swaying back and forth on the hips of the dancers. The four Mai Tais Bill had consumed made Polynesian dancing seem the only way to go … They also, with the dancing, made him ready for love. He could hardly wait to get Janet back to the room …

That same morning he was up at eight. Leaving Janet asleep, he met the children in the sitting room and the three of them went to breakfast. Boy, they
were
gorgeous kids, he thought as he looked at them over the rim of his coffee cup. The thought was interrupted by Jason’s, “Dad, could we rent a boat today?”

“That’s a good idea, Jason. How do you feel about that, Nicole?”

“Oh, I’d love it, daddy.”

“Okay, we’ll go up and tell mother.”

Janet was yawning away the last vestiges of sleep when Bill came into the room.

He kissed her. “How’d you sleep, honey?”

Smiling, she answered, “Just great … after you simmered down.”

“Was I simmering?”

“Among a few other things. I’m not complaining.”

“Well …” beaming … “how’d you like to go boating today?”

“Darling, would you forgive me if I didn’t? I might—pardon the small joke—only rock the boat … Frankly I’d just sort of like to be lazy on a chaise and soak up the sun.”

“You’re sure?”

“Sure … you’d better have the hotel pack a box lunch if you’re going to be out that long.”

“Good idea … we’ll meet you back on the beach.”

When the children saw the fourteen-foot sailboat they were delighted, and judged it, simultaneously, “terrific.”